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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Professor's Monthly Homework Assignment - Date Night

I just realised that I never told you about the amazing blog of "Professor Z", a fellow gothic in academia. While she is also writing her PhD thesis, she is in the field of historical arts while I'm in human genetics. She often speaks about the troubles and little successes on her blog which I can very much relate to! Writing a thesis is hard, but she does post a lot more often than me. Not only does she include lot of outfits, but she also has a feature named "Bat fit" which is essentially gothy folks gathering together to get fit and maybe loose a little weight. I can only recommend visiting her blog!

She also does this feature of a "Homework Assignment" which I'd like to participate in. This month's topic is - how very fitting so close to Valentine's day!- "Date Night". I actually do think that date nights are necessary to keep a relationship alive. Let m define date night first: A night were both partners consciously spend time together. This does not include sitting on the couch while watching TV. Of course you can do a movie night at home with a (rented) DVD, but you have to plan in advance and omit all other electronic devices. Sitting next to each other on the couch while surfing the Internets and having David Letterman on in the background doesn't qualify as date night!

from the Disney movie "Lady and the Tramp"

You also don't have to go out like in the proverbial date. This may be fun to do, but the most important thing is that both of you take time off for the date and both agree on what to do. While I like visiting Museums once in a while, my boyfriend hates this. Obviously not a good choice for date night. On the other hand, he plays Ultimate and I accompanied him to some tournaments. I always bore to death, so this was no good choice either! It is indeed good to try new things, but you don't have force each other into the date! ;)So what do we actually do for date night? A lot of things:

Playing video games together (old school like Super Nintendo Mario Cart or new stuff like Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii)

Go to the movies - we both like action and zombies, so choosing a movie is quite easy! The next one will be "Die Hard 5"!

Visit Zoos. We both like animals, so this is always a winner!

Go to a fancy restaurant - since this is expensive, we don't do it very often. But every once in a while, we try something we can't cook at home like Egyptian, Mexican or Japanese food

Cooking dates - where we try new stuff we never cooked at home, sometimes inspired by the stuff we ate in the restaurants or various cook books

Go shopping - no envy here, but the boyfriend likes to shop. So sometimes we go to the mall or the city centre or some flea market and buy some stuff!

Movie date night at home - As I said, it is hard to put the PC and cell phone aside, but when we watch his Bond Movie collection or other movies from his extensive collection we also get some quality time together

Sports - this is kind of tricky since I'm not that much into team sports, but I'll try!

Visiting sights - this weekend we did the SeaLife centre! We also like the parks nearby which are plenty!

You see, there are plenty of options which we do on our date nights. And we have them pretty often; we usually reserve at least one night a week for time together were we mostly crush on the couch and watch TV series (sometimes recorded) plus one day of the weekend. This might not seem like much to you, but we both do sports (he more often than me, usually 5 days a week), I sew and DIY, he plays PC games, we both have extensive groups of friends which we also like to meet plus family who want to see us once in a while... And I work about 45-50 hours a week. So we do what we to keep the relationship fresh. And we are already together for 6 years, so it seems to work!